Call to "Resist and Deter" Nuclear Iran Gains Key Support
A new report on how the United States should "resist and deter" Iran's alleged ambitions to acquire a nuclear-weapons capability by a think tank closely tied to the so-called "Israel Lobby" has been endorsed by two key officials who are expected to exercise major influence on Iran policy in the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama.
FBI Busts Alleged Anti-Government Group
Four people arrested in a raid involving tax evasion and weapons charges appeared in federal court Friday afternoon. Authoritites say the men are suspected of being leaders of an anti-government movement called Soverign Movement.
Morgan Stanley predicts economic collapse worse than depression
Morgan Stanley’s UK equity strategist Graham Secker painted a bleak economic picture for the United Kingdom. In his morning forecast, Mr. Secker warned that UK profits could fall by 60% in the current downturn - a worse performance than the great depression of the 1930s.
Its popularity is increasing as Congress searches for alternatives to the federal gasoline tax, which isn't indexed to inflation and hasn't been raised since 1993.
At a time when the newly laid-off are swelling unemployment rolls to record numbers, the painful surprise for many is that jobless benefits are taxed like income. That leaves many on the hook for hundreds or thousands of dollars because the taxes aren't automatically withheld from benefit checks.
Rival beats CME, Citadel in swaps race
CME Group Inc. and Citadel Investment Group appear to have lost the race to launch the first U.S. clearinghouse in the $27-trillion market for credit-default swaps.
Rival IntercontinentalExchange Inc. Friday said it received approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission and will start clearing the contracts Monday. The Atlanta-based energy market will clear the swaps though New York-based ICE Trust, which is overseen by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and backed by Wall Street firms including Bank of America Corp., Barclays Capital PLC, Citigroup Inc., Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank A.G., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., J. P. Morgan Chase & Co., Merrill Lynch & Co., Morgan Stanley & Co. and UBS A.G.
Why gold prices will keep rising
Safety-seeking investors are pouring money into gold despite prices that, though lower recently, remain near historic highs. The more we worry, the higher gold will go.
Obama-linked think tank calls for US “nuclear umbrella” in Middle East
By Bill Van Auken
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ratcheted up bellicose US rhetoric against Iran Wednesday, accusing the country of funding "terrorism" and interfering in the internal affairs of states throughout the Middle East. Her statements coincided with the release of a report by a Washington think tank with ties to the Obama administration suggesting that the US should establish a "nuclear umbrella" over the region.
Archive Collapse Disaster for Historians
The collapse of the Historical Archive of Cologne on Tuesday buried more than a millenium's worth of documents under tons of rubble. Archivists and historians hope something can be salvaged, but the future of the city's past is grim.
You have the right to refuse consent to a search if there's no warrant
Last year, Washington, D.C. police announced a "Safe Homes Initiative," under which police would knock on doors, asking for permission to search houses for illegal guns. The scheme bypassed Fourth Amendment constitutional concerns by putting the searches and seizures in the context of voluntary consent.
Avigdor Lieberman in line for Israel foreign minister job?
Avigdor Lieberman, the head of a provocative nationalist Israeli party, is on course to become the country's next foreign minister in a move likely to damage hopes of a peace deal for the region.
High-Level Fed Officials Slam Government Response to Crisis
Fed Vice Chairman Donald Kohn conceded yesterday that the government's actions "will reduce [companies'] incentive to be careful in the future." In other words, he's admitting that the government's actions will encourage financial companies to make even riskier gambles in the future.
Kiss the Banks Goodbye
By Dave Lindorff
The futility and stupidity of the Fed’s and the Obama administration’s policy of pumping ever more money into failing banks and insurance companies in a vain effort to get them lending again was demonstrated if anyone was paying attention by the collapse in auto sales this past month, with all the leading companies, Ford, GM and Toyota, reporting sales down by about 40%.
Pakistan 'can't rule out' foreign hand in attacks
A top Pakistan official has refused to rule out foreign involvement in the Sri Lankan cricket attacks despite international warnings that the nation faced serious internal dangers.
Health Canada finds bisphenol A in soft drinks
A Health Canada study of canned pop has found the vast majority of the drinks contain the chemical bisphenol A, a substance that imitates the female hormone estrogen and is banned in baby bottles.
Darth Wall Street Thwarting Debtors With Credit Swaps
Amusement-park operator Six Flags Inc. and automaker Ford Motor Co. may be pushed toward bankruptcy by bondholders trying to profit from credit-default swaps that protect against losses on their high-yield debt.
By employing a so-called negative-basis trade, investors could buy Six Flags bonds at 20.5 cents on the dollar and credit- default swaps at 71 cents. If the New York-based chain defaults, the creditors would receive the face value of the debt, minus costs. In a Feb. 27 note, Citigroup Inc.’s high-yield strategists put that profit at 6 percentage points, or $600,000 on a $10 million purchase.
Charges Dropped After Video Shows Cops Beating Man
Police accused a man in Ft. Lauderdale of attacking them, but surveillance video proves the story might be the other way around, and now a civilian is considering filing a suit against the department.
Revealed: police databank on thousands of protesters
Police are targeting thousands of political campaigners in surveillance operations and storing their details on a database for at least seven years, an investigation by the Guardian can reveal.
Photographs, names and video footage of people attending protests are routinely obtained by surveillance units and stored on an "intelligence system". The Metropolitan police, which has pioneered surveillance at demonstrations and advises other forces on the tactic, stores details of protesters on Crimint, the general database used daily by all police staff to catalogue criminal intelligence. It lists campaigners by name, allowing police to search which demonstrations or political meetings individuals have attended.
LIFE WITH BIG BROTHER
Radio chip coming soon to your driver's license?
Privacy advocates are issuing warnings about a new radio chip plan that ultimately could provide electronic identification for every adult in the U.S. and allow agents to compile attendance lists at anti-government rallies simply by walking through the assembly.
Bank of America Says Bonus Disclosure Will Harm It
Bank of America Corp. will suffer “grave and irreparable harm” if Merrill Lynch & Co. employees paid $3.6 billion in bonuses just before the firm’s acquisition by the bank are publicly identified, its lawyers said.
Clinton: 'Never waste a good crisis'
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton today told an audience "never waste a good crisis", as she highlighted the opportunity of rebuilding economies in a greener, less energy intensive model.
Tongue-tied Clinton gets warm EU welcome
Hillary Clinton raised eyebrows on her first visit to Europe as secretary of state when she mispronounced her EU counterparts' names and claimed U.S. democracy was older than Europe's.
Beating Back Obamanomics
By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
It's raining, pouring economic fallacies by the hour, followed by a flood of horrible policy that is driving us ever further into economic depression. The regime in charge has really gone nuts, revealing itself as both deeply ignorant and horribly evil.
Scientists Allege Fraud in 1984 HIV/AIDS Papers
Thirty-seven legal, medical and research professionals have sent a letter to the journal Science, asking it to officially retract the original four papers making the case for HIV as the cause of AIDS. According to the letter's authors, widespread evidence has now emerged that the studies were not only poorly carried out, but that their results were falsified.
Wealthy To Be Invited To Invest in The Bailout
The government is seeking to resuscitate the nation's crippled financial system by forging an alliance with the very outfits that most benefited from the bonanza preceding the collapse of the credit markets: hedge funds and private-equity firms.
AIG: Billions Dished Out in the Dark
This is crazy! Forget the bleating of Rush Limbaugh; the problem is not with the quite reasonable and, if anything, underfunded stimulus package, which in any case will be debated long and hard in Congress. The problem is with what is not being debated: the far more expensive Wall Street bailout that is being pushed through--as in the case of the latest AIG rescue--in secret, hurried deal-making primarily by the unelected secretary of the treasury and the chairman of the Federal Reserve.
Minnesota Bank Asks Why It Pays for Wall Street Greed
TCF Financial Corp., the Wayzata, Minnesota-based bank that never made a subprime loan and hasn’t lost money since 1995, is asking why it should help clean up the mess made by Wall Street.
Bill Seeks to Let FDIC Borrow up to $500 Billion
Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd is moving to allow the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to temporarily borrow as much as $500 billion from the Treasury Department.
Virus mix-up by lab could have resulted in pandemic
It's emerged that virulent H5N1 bird flu was sent out by accident from an Austrian lab last year and given to ferrets in the Czech Republic before anyone realised. As well as the risk of it escaping into the wild, the H5N1 got mixed with a human strain, which might have spawned a hybrid that could unleash a pandemic.
U.S. Military Aid to Israel
By Kathleen and Bill Christison
In these days of economic crisis, budget overruns, earmarks, and multi-billion dollar bailouts, when Americans are being forced to tighten their own belts, one of the most automatic earmarks a bailout by any measure goes to a foreign government but is little understood by most Americans.
US Unemployment Rate Jumps to 8.1 Percent
The nation's unemployment rate bolted to 8.1 percent in February, the highest since late 1983, as cost-cutting employers slashed 651,000 jobs amid a deepening recession.
Flu Pandemic Would Catch U.S. Unprepared
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has concluded that the nation is unprepared for the true effects of a pandemic such as that expected from avian flu.
Food stamp enrollment jumps to record 31.8 million
A record 31.8 million Americans received food stamps at the latest count, an increase of 700,000 people in one month with the United States in recession, government figures showed on Thursday.
Suspicions grow that attack was 'inside job'
Dramatic footage showing the alleged perpetrators of Tuesday's audacious attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team making their getaway was released by a Pakistani news channel last night.
Is It Now Okay to Talk about Hitler’s Assumption of Dictatorial Power?
By Jacob G. Hornberger
I know that it’s been considered improper to bring up Hitler in the context of what the Bush administration did for the past 7 years, but I wish someone would explain to me how Bush’s powers, as now revealed by those secret legal memos, were different from the dictatorial powers exercised by Hitler after the terrorist attack on the Reichstag in 1933, soon after Hitler became chancellor.
Ron Paul and the conspiracy of history
Not since 1939, when Winston Churchill’s lonely, defiant voice called the Nazi’s for what they really were, has anybody this old, been this right about something so dangerously missed by the rest of the public.
Senate Panel Reaches Terms For Probe of CIA Detentions
The Senate intelligence committee reached an agreement yesterday on the framework of a wide-ranging review of the CIA's past treatment of terrorism detainees, even as members acknowledged that the bulk of the panel's work will be conducted in secret.
Brown says he hasn’t filed federal, state taxes in 2 years
Brown, D-Macon, said Wednesday he’s not sure whether he actually owes the state or federal government any money because he hasn’t filed tax returns. He said he’s gotten extensions, but he declined to give more information or say for what years he received filing extensions.
The Kepler Observatory
It is the first mission with the ability to find planets like Earth -- rocky planets that orbit sun-like stars in a warm zone where liquid water could be maintained on the surface. Liquid water is believed to be essential for the formation of life.
Kepler spacecraft will hunt for planets that are just right for life
The most extensive search for Earth-like planets that could harbour life beyond the solar system is due to get under way in the early hours of tomorrow morning with the launch of a one-tonne spacecraft from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
Deutsche sees risk of U.S. GDP falling 10 pct in Q1
Deutsche Bank predicted there are risks that the U.S. economy could contract by as much as 10 percent in the first quarter, given the relentless wave of dismal economic data being reported in early 2009.
Anti-surveillance filmmaker plans eye-socket camera
A Canadian filmmaker plans to have a mini camera installed in his prosthetic eye to make documentaries and raise awareness about surveillance in society.
Israel-Palestine: A Land in Fragments
The U.S. says it supports a secure Israel and the creation of a viable Palestinian state. But the Obama administration has revealed that it will not challenge the facts on the ground the large blocks of land in the West Bank that have been claimed by Israel. Does this undermine the possibility of a viable Palestinian state?
Turley: Bush terror memos are 'definition of tyranny'
Constitutional Law Professor Jonathan Turley presents a legal perspective on memos released about the Bush administrations counter-terrorism policies and whether some members will be prosecuted for them.
Fed Refuses to Release Bank Lending Data, Insists on Secrecy
The Federal Reserve Board of Governors receives daily reports on loans to banks and securities firms, the institution said in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by Bloomberg News.
Unopened claims letters hidden at VA offices
A new report about Veterans Affairs Department employees squirreling away tens of thousands of unopened letters related to benefits claims is sparking fresh concerns that veterans and their survivors are being cheated out of money.
Report: Israel nears attacking Iran
Top US politicians have reportedly said that Israel is seriously considering taking unilateral military action against Iran.
Job vacancies and pay fall at record pace
Demand for staff at companies fell at its fastest rate in more than 10 years in February and pay also fell at a record rate as firms slashed costs, a survey showed on Wednesday.
Obama attack on oil & gas industry begins
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner wants to take away tax breaks for oil and gas companies because they contribute to global warming.
Carbon Costs Under Obama Cap-and-Trade
Gasoline prices would rise 12 cents during the first year of a U.S.-wide carbon cap-and-trade system based on President Barack Obama’s budget proposal, according to research firm Point Carbon.
Deal Clears Rove, Miers to Discuss Prosecutor Firings
Attorneys for former president George W. Bush, the U.S. House of Representatives and the Obama administration reached agreement yesterday to resolve a long-running dispute over the scope of executive power, a move that will allow lawmakers to question Bush aides Karl Rove and Harriet E. Miers about their roles in the firing of nine federal prosecutors in 2006.
Study: Modified Genes Contaminated Mexican Corn
One of the more acrimonious scientific debates of the decade may have ended with the publication of a study showing that genetically modified material did contaminate native corn in the crop's birthplace in southern Mexico, scientists said Wednesday.
Ohio couple: Pa. hospital harvested son's organs
The parents of an 18-year-old Ohio man who suffered a brain injury while snowboarding claim in a lawsuit filed Wednesday that doctors at a northwestern Pennsylvania hospital intentionally killed him so they could harvest his organs.
Two Checks on Tyranny
By Jacob G. Hornberger
The purpose of the Bill of Rights was twofold: first, to ensure that certain fundamental rights were protected from federal infringement and, second, to ensure that the American people were expressly guaranteed certain procedural rights in federal criminal prosecutions.
Get ready: DOUBLE DIGIT HYPERINFLATION!
In the last five months, according to the Federal Reserve Board, the money supply in the United States has increased by 271 percent. It has almost tripled.
NSA joining social network for intelligence analysts
The super-secret National Security Agency, traditionally reluctant to share its code-breaking secrets, is joining a new, highly classified social network that links its analysts for the first time with thousands of colleagues at other U.S. intelligence agencies.
Say please' at U. S. border nets pepper spray
A Canadian who demanded courtesy from a U.S. border security guard says he was pepper sprayed and held in custody for three hours for asking the disrespectful officer to "say please" when ordering him to turn his car off during a search.
Ron Paul on Bloomberg (03/03/09)
It's immoral to transfer wealth from the productive to the non-productive members of society. The stimulus and the bailouts will only make the problem worse. Government needs to get out of the way and let the market sort itself out.
Bring Back the Bank Run!
By James Grant
The banking dilemma seems eternal, like the monetary dilemma, the tax dilemma, and the marital dilemma. The essence of the banking dilemma, however, is that the depositors' money is not in the vault awaiting the depositors' decision to withdraw it. Instead it is out on loan or invested in the money market or in mortgage-backed securities.
Report: Diebold Voting System Has 'Delete' Button for Erasing Audit Logs
After three months of investigation, California's secretary of state has released a report examining why a voting system made by Premier Election Solutions (formerly known as Diebold) lost about 200 ballots in Humboldt County during November's presidential election.
But the most startling information in the state's 13-page report (.pdf) is not why the system lost votes, which Wired.com previously covered in detail, but that some versions of Diebold's vote tabulation system, known as the Global Election Management System (Gems), include a button that allows someone to delete audit logs from the system.
Mossad Link Found to One of Key 9-11 Hijackers
A NEW ISRAELI CONNECTION to the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001 has recently been unveiled. Buried in a New York Times story on Feb. 19 was the eye-opening revelation that a Lebanese Muslim Arab who has been taken into custody by the Lebanon—which has accused him of being a spy for some 25 years for Israeli intelligence—just happens to be a cousin of one of the Muslims alleged to have been one of the 9-11 hijackers.
The Inflation Tax
If the American taxpayers knew how much the federal government was actually costing them, there is no doubt that it would be much smaller than it is today. But the true burden of the federal government on the taxpayer is obscured in many ways.
Pakistan declares: 'We are at war'
Pakistan in shock after masked gunmen ambush Sri Lankan cricket team, leaving seven people dead and six players injured
EFF Releases How-To Guide to Fight Government Spying
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) launched its Surveillance Self-Defense project today -- an online how-to guide for protecting your private data against government spying.
Goodbye farmers markets and roadside stands
The "food safety" bills in Congress were written by Monsanto, Cargill, Tysons, ADM, etc. All are associated with the opposite of food safety. What is this all about then?
False Positive Drug Tests Exposed - National Press Club (Video)
The Marijuana Policy Project and the Mintwood Media Collective present the findings of a new study, False Positives Equal False Justice. Video exposes how field drug tests used by police and other government agencies give false positives.
Vietnam "disgusted" by US Agent Orange decision
Vietnamese officials Wednesday harshly criticized the US Supreme Court's decision not to hear an appeal of a lawsuit against the American manufacturers of the toxic defoliant Agent Orange that was thrown out by lower courts.
Chart: Obama Tracks Bush on National Security Cases
In a half-dozen national security lawsuits we've been following, the Obama administration has so far largely stuck by the positions taken by the Bush administration.
UBS official: Bank not giving names of U.S. clients
An official from UBS said today that Switzerland’s biggest bank won’t provide the names of any more American clients to the U.S government in a fight over secrecy and tax avoidance.
Child porn suspect ordered to decrypt own hard drive
In a move sure to stoke debates over constitutional protections against self-incrimination in the digital age, a federal judge has ordered a child porn suspect to decrypt his hard drive so prosecutors can inspect its contents.
Israelis react with fury to British boycott call
Israeli scientists and officials reacted angrily yesterday to calls by more than 400 British academics for the Science Museum to cancel educational workshops planned to promote Israeli science tomorrow.
In U.S. prison spending outpaces all but Medicaid
One in every 31 adults, or 7.3 million Americans, is in prison, on parole or probation, at a cost to the states of $47 billion in 2008, according to a new study.
Criminal correction spending is outpacing budget growth in education, transportation and public assistance, based on state and federal data. Only Medicaid spending grew faster than state corrections spending, which quadrupled in the past two decades, according to the report Monday by the Pew Center on the States, the first breakdown of spending in confinement and supervision in the past seven years.
China to increase defence spending by 15 per cent
China is to increase official military spending by almost 15 per cent this year as it seeks to upgrade its smart technology and improve the living standards of its soldiers.
Italian doctor claims he cloned three babies
An Italian doctor known for helping post-menopausal women to have children has claimed to have cloned three babies who are now living in eastern Europe.
Blagojevich gets six-figure book deal
Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich has landed a six-figure book deal to tell his story, his spokesman confirmed to CNN Monday.
Bill Would Put Tobacco Under FDA Control
In what appears to be the best chance since public health groups started pushing for it in the 1970s, Congress is poised to regulate tobacco, a product linked to 1,200 deaths each day but sold largely unfettered for centuries.
Clinton criticises Israeli breach of 'road map'
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton criticised on Wednesday Israel's plans to demolish dozens of Palestinian homes in Arab East Jerusalem as a violation of its international obligations.
Blueprints for a Police State
By Marjorie Cohn
Seven newly released memos from the Bush Justice Department reveal a concerted strategy to cloak the President with power to override the Constitution.
One in five U.S. mortgage borrowers are underwater
One in five U.S. homeowners with mortgages owe more to their lenders than their properties are worth, and the rate will increase as housing values drop in states that have so far avoided the worst of the crisis, a new study shows.
Private-sector payrolls lose 697,000 jobs
The private sector lost nearly 700,000 jobs in February, according to a report from payroll-processing company Automatic Data Processing released Wednesday, but a separate report showed that employers announced fewer job cuts last month.
Forecast 2009: There Will Be Blood
2009 will be a year of complete destruction for the US economy. 5 Million will lose their jobs. The Dow Jones Industrial average will break below 6,000. Municipalities will fail. Insurers will fail. The unemployed and foreclosed American population will take to the streets and begin rioting. The Greatest Depression is upon us.
Russian general says U.S. may have planned satellite collision
A collision between U.S. and Russian satellites in early February may have been a test of new U.S. technology to intercept and destroy satellites rather than an accident, a Russian military expert has said.
